


And Over Your Voice I'm Screaming (Love It Takes Time)

by folie_a_georgia



Category: The Maze Runner (2014)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, M/M, highschool, unbetaed, unless you haven't realised I can't tag I can't tag, you have to squint to see the newmas probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folie_a_georgia/pseuds/folie_a_georgia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After winter break, Thomas meets a new boy in his science class. Newt is shy and subdued, but Thomas likes him anyway. And then there's love poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Over Your Voice I'm Screaming (Love It Takes Time)

When Thomas comes back from a pretty cold winter break, it’s a much-needed milder day. The air is damp from the light fog that rose that morning, but he’s not wearing a scarf like he has been for the past two weeks, and it’s actually warm inside the building where he has his first class. He runs a hand through his hair and slips into his regular seat, just slightly to the left of the middle of the room, and the only difference is that across the aisle, instead of the red-haired girl who usually sits there, there’s a boy Thomas doesn’t think he recognises. The newcomer is baby-faced, from what he can tell from the side, pale and biting his lip. He looks lost.

“Hey. You, uh, might want to not sit there,” Thomas says softly, then immediately feels guilty because the new boy jumps about a foot in the air and whirls round, blood beading on his lip from where his teeth have broken the skin. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you… You’re gonna be stuck in the middle of the girls if you stay there. And Caitlin’s maybe gonna be a little pissed that you took her seat.”  
The boy blinks at him. “Um. Alright… Where’s there a spare place?” he asks, licking away the blood with the tip of his pointed tongue.  
“In front of me. Or next to, I think. The other guy switched classes, if I remember right.” Thomas shrugs. “Your choice.”  
The boy stands, revealing that he’s actually taller than Thomas thought, taller than Thomas himself. His body seems thin, but that could be because he’s wearing clothes that look too big - jeans that should be tight but aren’t, and a long-sleeve shirt that seems to have been chewed at the wrists. There’s not much time to study him, though, because the boy quickly moves to the empty seat on Thomas’s right side, seeming conscious of his height and skinny frame and apparently wanting to minimise his time being looked at. But of course he’s going to get looked at. He’s new, after all.

“What’s your name?” comes the quiet voice after a few minutes of neither of them speaking, as the rest of the class files in and takes their seats around them.  
“Thomas,” Thomas replies, smiling a little as he finds paper and dates it in the top right corner. “Yours?”  
A slight hesitation, and then, “Um… Newt. Call me Newt.”  
“Okay, Newt. You don’t come from round here, I guess?”  
“No, we moved from England. Just before Christmas.”  
Thomas nods. “I guessed, sort of. Nice accent.”  
“I bloody hate it.” Newt sighs. “Especially here. It marks me out as being different.”  
A frown makes its way onto Thomas’s face, replacing the small smile that had previously hovered around his lips. “Nothing wrong with being different.”

Newt doesn’t respond, and they lapse into silence for around a half-hour. Thomas listens to the teacher explaining a new concept, taking notes even on the parts he doesn’t understand so he can look them up later. It’s not hard to notice that Newt isn’t taking notes, he isn’t even pretending to. He just stares down at his blank page, occasionally sighing or running a hand through his hair. Mr Barnes either doesn’t notice, or is cutting him some slack because he’s new. It must be kind of hard to start a school in the middle of junior year, Thomas knows. Especially in a brand new country thousands of miles from the place you were before.

Eventually, though, the sighs fade away and Newt just puts his head in his hands, and Thomas turns to him even though he guesses the other boy’s eyes are closed. “Newt. Come on, man.”

There’s no response.

“I can help you catch up on other stuff if you don’t get it. But you’re just gonna fall even more behind if you don’t at least take notes.” He nudges him gently. “Anyone in there?”  
Newt only looks sideways at him, turning his head just slightly, then shakes his head no and goes back to staring down.  
“Kay. Let me know if you need any help,” Thomas murmurs, sighing a little himself and starting to do the task that’s been set.

He’s almost done when the bell goes for the end of the period, and breathes a sigh of relief when the teacher says their only homework is to get it completed. It won’t take him too long to finish up the parts he doesn’t get right now. He turns to Newt to ask what his next class is, but the other boy has his head on the desk. Thomas gives his shoulder a little shake. “Rise and shine. One class down, what’ve you got now?”  
“French.” The answer is muffled, and Newt doesn’t move. “In block C.”  
“I’m in B, I’ll walk you there. If you need a hand. The map they give you’s pretty crappy.”  
“I didn’t even get a map, I don’t think. But I’ll find it. Thanks anyway, Thomas.”  
“No problem. Come say hi if you see me again.”

Thomas thinks of Newt all the way to his art class, and finds himself getting distracted by thoughts of the new boy’s pointed cheekbones and how wrong they seem in the face that must be far too young for his age, and when he starts to sketch out ideas, thin wrists with dark veins spill from his pencil to his page. It’s only when he goes for more paper and overturns white paint onto the front of his red hoodie that he realises he should maybe be paying more attention to his surroundings, and pushes images of a mop of brown-blond curls from his mind.

It’s his free period when he sees Newt again, third hour in the library. Newt’s curled in a corner with a book propped up on his knees, title hidden from Thomas’s view. He looks up as the other boy approaches and quietly sits near, but not too near, to him.  
“Hey, stranger.” Thomas smiles.  
“Hi.” Newt wets his lips with his tongue and smiles back slightly.  
“Good book?”  
“I’m not actually reading it. I was making the most of the quiet.”  
“Oh.” Thomas bites his lip. “Do you want me to leave? I just thought you looked lonely.”  
Newt shakes his head once, quickly. “No. No, don’t. It’s fine. I am a bit lonely, if I’m honest.” He yawns softly. “Oh god, sorry. I’m also fairly tired.”  
“It’s not a problem.” Thomas smiles at him again, trying to be reassuring. “It’s not particularly comfortable here, though. Why didn’t you go for a couch?”  
“They’re all out in the open and I didn’t want to talk to people I don’t know. French was bloody awful and people keep asking me questions.”  
“Like I said, I can go if you want to be alone.”  
“No. You’re not like them. I know you now.”

That makes Thomas’s smile grow quite a lot. “Thanks, Newt… You doing okay here?”  
“I’m fine. I like it in here.”  
“I don’t just mean here in the library. Here in school, in town… So far from home?”  
Newt sighs, and once again his teeth are digging into his lip. “I’m fine,” he says again, then holds out the book to Thomas. “I… Will you read to me? I can’t even see the words right… and I like poetry. It’s calming.”

Somewhat taken aback, Thomas nods without really thinking about it. “Uh. Yeah, okay.” He opened the book to a page without looking, hesitated a little and then read.

“ _You are like me, you will die too, but not today:_  
 _you, incommensurate_ -”

“I don’t even know what that means,” he objected.  
Newt rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Please don’t stop.”

“ _you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:_  
 _if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been_  
 _set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost_  
 _radio, may never be an oil painting or_  
 _Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are_  
 _a concordance of person, number, voice,_  
 _and place, strawberries spread through your name_  
 _as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me_  
 _of some spring, the waters as cool and clear_  
 _(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind)_ -”

“Weird poem.” Thomas interrupts himself again.  
“I like it,” Newt murmurs, head resting on his knees. “And your voice is good to listen to. Keep going?”

“ _which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:_  
 _and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium_  
 _or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star_  
 _in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving_  
 _from its earthwards journeys, here where there is_  
 _no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,_  
 _when there was snow), you are my right,_  
 _have come to be my night (your body takes on_  
 _the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep_  
 _becomes you): and you fall from the sky_  
 _with several flowers_ -”

“Newt, this poem is most probably about death.”  
“Maybe. Stop interrupting yourself.”

“ _with several flowers, words spill from your mouth_  
 _in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet_ -”

Thomas splutters. “I sense sex.”  
Please just finish it,” Newt says quietly. “Please.”

“- _salt-sweet (trees_  
 _and seas have flown away, I call it_  
 _loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,_  
 _a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,_  
 _and free of any eden we can name._ ”

Newt sighs softly, breaking the seconds of silence that seem to stretch out between them when Thomas puts down the book in a kind of stunned silence. He doesn't usually read poetry, finds it boring most of the time, but… “Wow,” he whispers eventually.  
Newt looks  up at him with a slight smile. “Mm? I knew you’d like it at the end.”  
“You read it before?”  
“I read them all before. It’s possibly my favourite one, though.”  
“It’s nice… You look like you’re nearly asleep.”  
Newt laughs softly. “I think I am, just about.”

A call of his name interrupts them, before Thomas can come up with the words for a reply. “Thomas? What happened to waiting for me on the bus this morning, man?”  
“I walked, considering that it’s not freezing outside for once, Min.” Thomas laughs.  
“I did offer you a lift, Minho.” The second new voice is Alby’s, and he comes up behind the first boy and gives him a slight shove.  
“Yeah, after I got on the stupid bus, Alby.”

They’re polar opposites, Alby and Minho. The latter is all angles and spikes, pixie-like with pointed tips of ears poking through his gelled hair, built to be an athlete. In contrast, Alby is shorter, though he’s older, with broader shoulders and muscle to make Minho’s wiriness simply seem thin.

They’re both looking curiously at Newt.

“New friend, Thomas?” Alby asks, taking a seat on the floor opposite the two. “Hey.”  
Thomas nods. “Yeah, this is Newt. He’s in my chem class. Possibly others but only chem so far. Newt, these are my friends. Alby, and Minho.”  
“Or any variation you can think of,” Minho chimes in, dropping elegantly to the floor. “Thomas likes Min. Al tends to go for ‘idiot’.”  
“For obvious reasons.” Alby shoves him again, and he shoves back, and they both appear to make it their mission to push the other over.  
Thomas laughs and scoots closer to Newt, out of the way of the flailing arms. “They’re awesome,” he assures quietly, “I promise.”  
“They seem okay,” Newt whispers back. “Minho’s a little loud, though.”  
“Sure is.”  
“It’s part of my natural charm!” Minho calls, ducking under Alby’s arm and crawling over to them. “I surrender, douchebag. You okay, Newt? You’re pretty quiet.”

Thomas frowns. He thinks it’s kind of obvious that Newt’s shy.  
“I’m fine.” Newt shrugs. “People keep asking me if I am and I am, honestly.”

Thomas reaches for the poetry book again, closing it and giving it back to Newt. “I don’t know where this goes…”  
“I’ll put it back when I go.” Newt smiles a little, pushing his hair out of his eyes, lingering over his temple as he moves his hand back.  
It slips past Thomas and Minho, but not Alby. “You’re not fine. Headache?”  
Newt reddens. “Only a bit. It’ll go away.”  
“It’s probably stress. New school and everything,” the eldest boy diagnoses. “Need us to give you some peace and quiet?”  
“It’s okay. Bearable.”  
“We should go anyway. Min only wanted to find Thomas, and now you found him so we can leave them be, right?” Alby elbows Minho in the ribs, making him jump away with a whine.  
“I guess? We’ll still all sit together at lunch?”  
Thomas laughs. “Of course. But you’re being ridiculously loud right now. Let Newt sort his head out and then we can all have a cutesy girl talk, okay?” He rolls his eyes as the two stand, and Alby drags Minho out of the library and he and Newt are left alone in the quiet corner again.

“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling good?” he asks softly, watching the other boy curl in on himself, reminiscent of a flower at dusk.  
Newt sighs. “I didn’t want you to know. Didn’t want you to worry.”  
Thomas shakes his head. “I’m worrying now. It took Alby to work out something was wrong. You’re a good actor.” He wonders how Newt will react if he reaches out and touches his shoulder or his hair, just gently, to try and get him to relax. But it doesn’t take long for him to decide against it.  
“Please don’t worry.”  
He bites his lip, not knowing what to say.

“Will you read me the poem again?”  
“I… I guess so.”

Newt hands the book back, lifting his head to smile just slightly. “Thank you.”

Thomas reads again, and when it’s done Newt seems to have moved closer, close enough for them to lean against one another. And Thomas closes his eyes and joins Newt in quiet darkness.

The bell disturbs them both. Thomas invites Newt to sit with him and Minho and Alby and their other friends at lunch, after the next hour. Newt smiles, declines, and then reconsiders and accepts, making Thomas laugh. “I’ll see you in the cafeteria.” He stands up and leaves the library, glancing back in the direction of his new-found friend just once, with a slight wave and a shake of his head as it looks like Newt’s fallen asleep.

And it’s kind of adorable.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed. Also, should I continue and turn this into a multi-chapter or series? I can't decide...
> 
> The italicised poem is "You, Therefore" by Benjamin Shepherd. I just think it's incredible.


End file.
